Thomas & Charlotte Pitt 29 - Death On Blackheath (21 page)

She felt the tears prickle her eyes, which was ridiculous. Grown women, approaching forty, did not weep at the breakfast table, no matter how alone or unnecessary they felt. The only way to stop it was to replace hurt with anger – carefully controlled.

‘You didn’t think that I might from time to time wonder about Dudley Kynaston and the disappearing maid, not to mention the mutilated corpse within a quarter of a mile of his home on Shooters Hill? Of course, if you have declined the offer of a position with him then it is no longer my husband’s future at stake, not to mention my own, it is simply a matter of speculation, much as any other particularly grotesque murder might be.’

Jack was very pale now, and a tiny muscle was ticking on the right side of his face.

Emily swallowed the lump in her throat. Perhaps she had gone too far?

‘I am quite aware of the public speculation on the subject,’ he said gravely. ‘I am also aware that neither the police nor Special Branch has identified the corpse as being that of Kitty Ryder. Somerset Carlisle, who is as irresponsible as a man can be, has used his Parliamentary privilege to suggest that the body is Kitty Ryder, and that her death is connected to her service in Kynaston’s house, but there is no proof of it, or even any evidence.’

‘People won’t care about that!’ she said hotly.

‘I care!’ His voice was hard, angry in a way she had not ever seen before, and it chilled her deeply. This was not the man who had wooed her, adored her, held her in his arms as if he would never let her go. This was someone she barely knew.

Loneliness drowned her, sweeping her off her balance like a riptide.

‘I’ve learned better,’ he said grimly, measuring each word. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t. When George was killed … murdered … many people thought it was you who had done it. Do you remember that? Do you remember how afraid you were? How you felt everyone was against you, and you couldn’t find any way to prove your innocence?’

Her mouth was dry. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Now, suddenly, she could remember it hideously well.

He looked at her very steadily across the table. ‘And what would you think of me if I assumed Dudley Kynaston was guilty of having murdered his wife’s maid, brutally, breaking the bones in her body and mutilating her face, when we don’t even know that she’s dead? Would you admire me for that? Even if I did it so that I wouldn’t be stained by association should it turn out to be true?’

She took a very deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

‘I would not admire you,’ she said quite honestly. Then continuing in the same vein: ‘But I would have appreciated your talking it over with me, so I understood what you were doing, and why. I don’t know how to interpret silence.’

He looked startled, as if it required a moment or two of thought before he understood. ‘Don’t you?’ he said at length. ‘I thought you understood that … I told you …’

‘No, you didn’t!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, and I don’t know what you’re going to do.’

‘I don’t know myself,’ he said reasonably. ‘I really can’t believe Dudley would have an affair with a maid …’ He stopped, looking at the lopsided, rueful smile on her face. ‘Not that he’s so righteous, Emily! I know perfectly well that plenty of men do! I just don’t think Dudley Kynaston’s taste runs to maids! Even handsome ones!’ He was very slightly flushed. She saw it in his face, and the way his eyes almost avoided hers, and then didn’t.

‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ she said with conviction.

‘Who what is?’

‘Jack! Don’t play games with me! You know he’s having an affair. You know who with! Which is why you don’t think it is with the maid …’

He was on his feet, and she stood up too. ‘Why on earth don’t you tell Thomas? You could save Kynaston … practically from ruin! Thomas isn’t going to make it public. He’ll keep it just as secret as you do, if it … oh!’ She stared at him, looking into his beautiful, long-lashed eyes, still feeling the beat of her heart shaking her. ‘It’s worse than the maid! Could it really be? Like whom? Someone he can’t ever be seen with …’ Her imagination raced.

‘Emily, stop it!’ he said firmly. ‘I said I didn’t think maids were his taste, that’s all. I don’t know the man that well, and I certainly don’t have his confidence in romantic affairs! Or even merely lustful ones. I very much want to work with him, but I don’t know if it will be possible. I’d rather err on the side of thinking too well of him than of assuming his guilt before there’s even proof of a crime he might be involved in. Wouldn’t you?’

She did not answer. She wanted him safe, and she wanted him to talk to her. Above all she wanted him to love her the way he had before he became a Member of Parliament. But to say so would be appallingly childish, embarrassingly so. She blushed hot at the idea he might even guess that that was what she meant.

‘I imagine I might,’ she agreed. ‘But there’s something in your voice that makes me think you don’t trust him, for all your generous words. I dare say you are right, and he wouldn’t have an affair with a maid, or even take advantage of her in something less emotional than an affair. But there is something wrong, you just don’t know yet whether it is something you should take notice of or not.’

He looked disconcerted for a long moment, then he smiled, with the same warm, easy charm she knew right from the beginning. She should stop telling herself she was not still in love with him. She knew better than to believe such a lie anyway.

‘You have a gift for putting things horribly plainly,’ he said with a degree of approval. ‘You would never be a success in Parliament. I don’t know how you do it in Society. I wouldn’t dare!’

‘You have to smile when you say things people don’t want to hear,’ she replied. ‘Then they think you don’t really mean it. Or at worst, they aren’t sure that you do. And it’s quite different for me anyway; nobody needs to care very much what I think. They can always discount it, if they want to. Except, of course, if I tell them they look marvellous and are up-to-the-minute in fashion. Then, naturally, I am talking perfect sense, and my opinion is infallible.’

He looked at her for a moment, not sure himself how much to believe. Then he shook his head, kissed her briefly but softly on the cheek, and left the room.

It was better than it might have been, not yet a disaster, but it was still very much too close to the brink. She must do something, and not with Charlotte this time. Regardless of who did what, Charlotte always got the credit.

Emily was ideally placed to spend an afternoon with Rosalind Kynaston. She looked through the newspaper Jack had discarded and found a suitable event, and another for tomorrow, and the day after. Then she used her telephone to call Rosalind and invite her to an exhibition of French Impressionist paintings, and then perhaps afternoon tea. Very deliberately she did not invite Ailsa.

She was happily surprised when Rosalind replied that she had no engagements that afternoon that could not be put off, even though it meant that Emily was not nearly as well prepared as she would like to be as to exactly how she would conduct herself to gain the best advantage she could. She knew perfectly well that she wanted to acquire some information that would assist Pitt, and therefore Jack, in determining what had happened to Kitty Ryder, and who had caused it. She would very much like the perpetrator not to be anyone in the Kynaston house.

She took great care dressing. The pink had been a disaster. Simply for the memory, apart from anything else, she would not wear it again. In fact, she might well avoid all warm, light colours! She had sufficient means to choose anything she wished. With her fair hair and pale skin, especially after the winter, something delicate and cool was the obvious choice. How had she been so foolish as to do otherwise? Desperation is never a good judge!

She chose a very pale teal, half-way between blue and green, with a white silk fichu at the neck. She regarded herself critically in the glass, and was satisfied. She must now forget the whole dress issue and concentrate on what she would say.

They met on the steps of the gallery, Rosalind arriving only moments after Emily. They greeted each other warmly and went inside. It was a very pleasant day, but the wind still had a March bite to it.

‘I apologise for such inconsiderate haste,’ Emily said as they reached the entrance hall. ‘I just had a sudden urge to go somewhere simply for the sake of it, not to be correct and have to make conversation.’

‘I was delighted,’ Rosalind said with feeling. She glanced at Emily very directly. ‘We shall play truant from obligation for a whole afternoon.’ She did not add anything about her sister-in-law, but somehow it hung in the air between them. The very absence of her name was an observance in itself.

Emily knew she must not be too direct too soon. She smiled as they walked towards the first gallery.

‘I have always liked Impressionist paintings. They seem to have a freedom of the mind. Even if you don’t like the work itself, it offers you a dozen different ways to see it and interpret it. Something that is strictly representational forces on you its reality straight away.’

‘I never thought of that,’ Rosalind said with very evident pleasure. ‘Perhaps we could stay here all afternoon?’ She did not add how much the idea appealed to her; it was clear in her face.

The first room was taken up almost entirely with paintings of trees, light on leaves, shadows on grass, and impressions of movement in the wind. Emily was happy to gaze at them for their own beauty for quite some time, and allow Rosalind to do the same, although she did glance several times at her face and study the expression in it. Rosalind was clearly troubled. Emily had been right in her observation that the subtle nature of the art allowed a great deal of one’s own interpretation, the dark as well as the light. It has been an emotionally dangerous place to come. So much feeling could be laid bare. And yet with time brief, and perhaps the stark reality of betrayal waiting, still the best one. But one mistake of too much candour too soon could destroy it all, like smashing a mirror, so that you would never know what it had reflected.

She moved up to join Rosalind in front of a pencil drawing of windblown trees.

‘Doesn’t it make you wonder what was going on in the mind of the artist?’ she said quietly. ‘There is so much strain in those branches. Some of them look close to breaking.’

‘I suppose everyone has their own wind, and their own darkness,’ Rosalind said quietly. ‘Perhaps that is what real art is. Any good journeyman can capture the individual and reproduce what the eye sees. A genius can capture the universal in what everyone feels … or perhaps not everyone, but people of a thousand different sorts.’

There would never be a clearer opportunity. It was almost as if Rosalind were seeking an opening to speak.

‘You are right,’ Emily agreed quietly so that anyone else entering the room would not chance to overhear her. ‘This drawing looks as if the branches are all hugging each other in the darkness, afraid of the violence outside.’

‘I see the violence inside, and the darkness beyond,’ Rosalind said with a tiny, tense little smile. ‘And I see them huddling, but not together except by chance.’

Emily affected not to have noticed anything raw or painful in her words, but her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘What about the picture over there?’ She indicated one also of branches, but utterly different in mood. The inner knots unravelled, and one smiled simply to look at it. ‘To me it is the complete opposite, and yet the subject is the same.’

‘The light,’ Rosalind said without hesitation. ‘In that one the wind is warm, and they are dancing in it. All the leaves flutter, like frills, or skirts.’

‘Dancers,’ Emily said thoughtfully. ‘That’s right – absolutely. It is very difficult for someone else to tell how your partner is holding you, lightly, supportively, or so tightly you are bruised and you know you cannot escape. I wonder if someone has painted real dancers that way. Or would it be too obvious? It would be something to attempt, wouldn’t it? If you were a painter?’

‘Perhaps that is what group portraiture is about,’ Rosalind suggested.

Emily laughed. ‘Not if you want another commission!’

Rosalind spread her hands in a tiny little gesture of submission. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘You must paint people the way they wish to be seen. But would any great artist do that, except to earn enough to live on?’

‘Can anyone afford not to make accommodations?’ Emily asked in return.

It was a moment or two before Rosalind replied. By then they had moved to the next room where most of the paintings were seascapes, or views of lakes and rivers.

‘I like the sea pictures better,’ Rosalind observed. ‘The open horizon.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘That one is beautiful and terrible – the loneliness in it, even despair. It looks like a gravel pit, deserted and filled in with water.’

Emily said nothing, waiting.

‘I’m sure you must have heard that my lady’s maid is missing,’ Rosalind went on, looking at the painting, not at Emily. ‘And that there was a body found in the gravel pits near us. We don’t know yet whether it is Kitty, or not.’

‘Yes,’ Emily agreed. ‘It must be dreadful for you … I can’t imagine.’ She could imagine very well, but it was not the time to be speaking about herself, or the tragedies of her own past.

‘The worst part is the suspicion,’ Rosalind went on. ‘I can’t help hoping she is alive and well somewhere, for everyone’s sake. But she wasn’t an irresponsible person at all. Everyone is suggesting that she ran off with the young man she was courting, but I don’t believe it. I can’t. She liked him, but she wasn’t in love. Ailsa says she was, but I know better. Either she’s dead, or she ran away for a reason that seemed real to her.’ For a moment Rosalind’s face looked as utterly bleak as the painted gravel pit on the wall.

Emily felt she must say something, not only because she could not let the opportunity slip out of her grasp, but out of ordinary kindness.

‘Are you sure you are not letting your fondness for her make you overlook her faults?’ she asked gently. ‘Wouldn’t you rather think she was flighty and on rare occasions selfish, rather than dead? After all, who could she be so afraid of that she would run off into the night without a word?’ Dare she take it any further? If she did, it must be now! She hesitated only a moment. ‘Wouldn’t you have sensed it? A look in her face, a clumsiness perhaps, an inattention to detail? It is very hard to conceal fear great enough to make you run off alone into a winter night! It was January then, wasn’t it? I don’t really like to go out in January even wrapped up and in a carriage, and knowing I will come back to my own bed.’